What Is Explore?
Explore is The Archiver's AI research chat — a way to ask questions about your archive and get thoughtful, researched answers backed by the actual documents in your collection.
The plain-English explanation
Think of Explore like having a conversation with a very well-read research assistant who has read every single document in your archive. You ask a question; the assistant answers it by drawing on what's in the documents — quoting them, citing them, and reasoning from them.
"What was John Smith's relationship with his business partner?" "What do the financial records tell us about the farm's profitability in the 1930s?" "Are there any mentions of the flooding in the village?"
How it's different from Search
| Search | Explore |
|---|---|
| Finds files that match keywords | Answers questions using the content of files |
| Returns a list of results | Returns a researched narrative |
| You read the documents | The AI reads the documents for you |
| Instant | Takes 30–120 seconds |
| No limit on uses | Uses your monthly AI allowance |
What Explore can do
- Answer factual questions about the people, events, and themes in your archive
- Summarise a time period covered by your documents
- Identify who knew whom, who worked together, who had conflicts
- Find connections between documents you might have missed
- Give you a narrative overview of a topic across many documents
What Explore cannot do
- Access information outside your archive (it only knows what's in your documents)
- Guarantee 100% accuracy — it can misread or misinterpret a document
- Replace your own careful reading of the primary sources
Always check Explore's answers against the source documents it cites. The AI is a starting point, not the final word.
Getting started
See Starting a Session to run your first Explore session.